


The Strangling Fruit

by garfunkelandgoats



Category: Annihilation (2018 Garland), Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Annihilation AU, Clones, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Kaiju!Newt, M/M, Possessed Newton Geiszler, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Psychological Horror, Self destruction, Slow Burn, takes place in the 10 years between PR movies but uprising doesn't actually happen, well. sort of.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-02-04 08:45:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18601078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garfunkelandgoats/pseuds/garfunkelandgoats
Summary: "That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated it shall walk the world in the bliss of not-knowing. And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you that remains."---In the first year after the closing of the Breach, a few acres of land are mysteriously changed by an unknown force and Dr. Geiszler reaches his breaking point. The thing that takes his place inherits both the weight of the hivemind and the stubborn affection of his lab partner.Previously titled Above On Green Fields





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! If this looks familiar to you at all it's because I originally started posting it on here under a different title/description ("Til Human Voices Wake Us/I Bet On Losing Dogs") and have since deleted it because I kind of rushed the writing since at the time I was trying to just get it put out there and didn't have any particular direction. Since then I've formulated more of a design for the story and I'm in a more productive place than I was a month ago so I'm giving it another go and sort of reworking the bits I liked from the original.
> 
> EDIT: title change lol

There’s a terrible gravity to it, he thinks, watching the beast’s tongue unfurl, the alien membrane glowing noxious blue reflected in the lenses of his cracked glasses. It occurs rather dimly to him that they’ll be a real bitch to replace if he survives this somehow, if he isn’t dissolving in the Kaiju’s stomach this time tomorrow. Newt always thought his final moments would be a bit cooler, and if not that then stupid enough for him not to see it coming at all, but when he tries to drum up some resolve, some gallows-dignity stiff upper lipped bullshit before he gets gobbled the fuck up in a crowded shithole a long way from home, all he can seem to inspire in himself is a dread deep in the pit of his stomach, an ears-popping sort of misery he can’t quite put into words. He really hopes he doesn’t throw up when the thing eats him. 

 

Or wouldn’t that be a last tag sort of deal? Nothing much dignified about that regardless, and if it does eat him any witnesses are surely soon to follow anyways so who the hell cares, right?

 

Newt’s hand twitches at his side, some part of his throbbing head telling him to  _ reach out and touch it _ like it’s fucking ET or something, and for a blissful moment he very nearly does, awful feeling of inevitability receding into the background as he inexplicably calms. No life flashing before his eyes, no white light--blue, nothing but blue, surrounding him, consuming him, and then Otachi pulls back and away and Newt lets out a long, shuddering breath before retching onto the ground.

 

He wipes the bile from his mouth, thoroughly scrambled and without a friendly face in sight--pretty much the opposite, really, considering he elbowed his way in here with his  _ I’m a doctor! _ routine and then very nearly turned their shelter into a buffet line (not his finest moment, he knows that, probably says something unfortunate about him as a person, but he can’t seem to muster up the guilt to give it the wallowing it deserves)--and in his first wise decision of the evening elects to show himself out.

 

The trek back through the Bone Slums to Hannibal Chau’s place won’t survive his memory, drowned out by pretty much everything else about that night, but the details are these: he’s soaked to the bone, disoriented, and very very afraid, but more than that he’s fucking  _ vindicated _ . Something deep inside him is urging him on, giddy, near hysterical in his all consuming need to prove himself right. There are thirty texts and six missed calls from Hermann when he finally checks his phone. Newt feels a twinge of guilt and shoots off a quick text to let him know he’s not Kaiju food, but can’t bring himself to answer when his phone starts ringing again almost as soon as it’s received.

 

“Sorry, bud.” He doesn’t know why he doesn’t answer. There’s no reasoning to it, no thought at all, and though it doesn’t occur to him at the time to even do so he likely would have written it off as stress, but this--so early, so unremarkable--is the first decision of many that isn’t his. 

 

Newt likes to think he’s seen enough movies to recognize a Moment Of Great Significance when it comes and generally he’s fairly accurate, though to be fair the last twelve years have been very much unreal, so movielike that the list of titles he can’t watch anymore seems to grow larger by the day. 

 

Which is a shame because he’s always fucking  _ loved _ Godzilla. Everything’s always  _ too soon _ all the time (which when you’re dealing with an ongoing situation seems a bit much to him but whatever) and twelve years on the tattoos still get him weird looks sometimes and so he’s learned to ignore it, learned that some people (most people) can’t or won’t keep up with him or his bullshit and that’s okay, really, he can work with that, so long as he keeps them laughing with him and not at him (to his face anyways) he doesn’t give two shits whether or not the mouthbreathers invite him to their reindeer games. 

 

But anyways he’s been waiting and waiting for his Moment Of Great Significance for all his goddamn life which is more than a bit odd when you really think about it because it’s not like he of the six doctorates, he of the obnoxious prodigy childhood is really so starving for a break from monotony since it’s not like his life is so mediocre, right, he was at MIT before he could drive, he had a  _ band _ once--and sure maybe they weren’t so great, maybe they could even be called a total pile of shit, but that’s  _ fine _ , because from the moment he drifted with the Kaiju brain and his head didn’t explode he’s been chomping at the bit for some of that sweet sweet vindication once he’s not at imminent risk of dying anymore and has a chance to rub it in Hermann’s stupid face.

 

And then there’s Hermann, whose place in his life he grows more unsure of every day.

 

There’s an inevitability there too, or at least he likes to think there is, trying to read between the lines of every page of their now very long history. Newt wants, more than anything, to believe that they’re going somewhere, that all these years of getting in each others faces hasn’t been for naught, and sometimes he thinks he sees that future in the slight (familiar? fond?) smile Hermann occasionally gives him when things are good and they’re on the same side and they’re both tired and more companionable than usual. Sometimes they’ll be united against a common goal (ha, as if the Kaiju weren’t big enough fish for their little tit for tat to fry), against the collective ignorance of the outside world, that being  _ everyone outside their lab _ , those moments and the letters are what Newt wants to believe in, what he holds to truth higher even than the laws of science, the odds of them surviving this thing at all.

 

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? He doesn’t know if they’re going to make it out of this.

 

This could be it.

 

This could be  _ it _ , and Newt isn’t sure what he had for breakfast this morning. 

 

He’s not sure he had anything at all, not sure what day it is, and isn’t that just a goddamned shame, not to know what day the human race officially goes kaput?  _ He _ thinks so, anyways. There’s supposed to be a sort of continuity, some sort of definitive thing to say: this is how it all ended--the thought that they might just all cease to be and he doesn’t even know if it was a fucking Tuesday is upsetting to him for some reason.

 

Though, to be fair, it’s far more likely that their inevitable deaths wouldn’t be as quick as that. Well, maybe, if the bomb goes off, but who’s to say what that’ll mean for everyone else, or even for them really. He wonders, dully, if this whole thing doesn’t work and the Kaiju start pouring through the Breach like Hermann predicted, whether they’ll be together when it happens, whether he’ll die alone out here in the cold rain, whether he’ll get to say a proper goodbye or tell Hermann that he--

 

Okay. That isn’t helping.

 

And anyways there isn’t exactly a whole lot of time to angst over his romantic prospects when he’s got shit to  _ do _ , this is the moment, he’s received the call and now it’s time to jump for it once again only this time it’s  _ really fucking here _ and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do and a part of him isn't entirely sure he isn’t still on the lab floor and another part didn’t think he’d get up in the first place, that this isn’t just the last couple sparks in his brain clinging to life, to consciousness-- though he likes to think he wouldn’t make his dying dream such a total shitshow.  

 

Okay, okay, he tells himself, and resolves to be the bigger person and overlook the whole attempted murder thing if it means Hannibal Chau will let him at that brain, because if it’s too far gone then this whole misadventure will have been for nothing and they’re all probably going to die horribly a lot sooner than he would have liked. 

 

It’s looking grim, he knows that, intellectually he  _ knows _ that, but damn it all if his internal sense of narrative won’t allow it. The last twelve fucking years have been building to this and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do if it doesn’t work. Well. He sort of does know, doesn’t he, that’s the thing. There’ll be plenty of dying to get to, heaps of it to go around.

 

Newt notes distantly that he does not in fact remember what he was doing in the days before Trespasser, so thoroughly was his life swallowed up in its wake. Was he doing anything? Going anywhere? 

 

Amending his previous thought, he doesn’t have any idea what he’s going to do if it  _ does _ work. 

 

His life is a cramped lab with no windows and a line down the middle and his penpal-rival-frenemy who he’s had hardly a kind word with in a very long time. Since the letters, probably, if that isn’t just the saddest goddamn thing. Both ways, huh, Newt thinks, and wonders what the hivemind thinks of their little arrangement. 

 

He knows the answer but isn’t sure how. Doesn’t matter.

 

The walkie goes silent before erupting into horrible sound, the team inside Otachi’s corpse screaming, as Newt turns to look at the downed Kaiju. His hand is shaking uncontrollably but he hasn’t noticed yet. He is increasingly aware of the lingering taste of vomit in his mouth.

 

“It’s pregnant.” Newt hears the words but doesn’t register that they’re coming out of his mouth, staring blankly as Chau beside him swears and turns to run, as everyone around him runs, as the baby kaiju rips shrieking from its mother’s belly, and again there’s the blue, the bright blue, and his legs are jelly, bright horrible beautiful goddamn blue and he doesn’t remember how to run, and then he does, and it’s  _ right fucking behind him it’s gonna get him it’s gonna eat him _ \--

 

He trips on nothing, falls--

 

He’s crawling as fast as he can but it’s not fast enough but he can’t get up he just has to keep moving--

 

He’s gonna die and Hermann’s gonna find that stupid fucking tape if he hasn’t already--

 

It’s gonna hurt him so bad and maybe he wanted it to but he’s sorry now he’s  _ sorry _ \--

 

_ He really really doesn’t want to die not now not like this he’s fucking sorry _ \--

 

And then the goddamn thing strangles itself on its umbilical cord.

 

“NO--no--please!” Newt’s whimpering and he knows it as he grips the leg of his pants in his fist, white knuckled and waiting to die. 

 

When that moment never comes he moves, slowly, turning over, bathed in the blue light again, and lets out a shuddering breath, wetness pricking at the corners of his eyes, staggers to his feet, wobbly, a hand stretched out just a bit as if to brace himself, as if anything could keep the baby Kaiju from  _ eating _ him and destroying his  _ stupid little life _ \--

 

“I knew it,” Hannibal Chau says, startling him from his thoughts before he can question them. “Lungs weren’t fully formed. Umbilical cord tied around his neck--no way he could survive outside the womb for more than a minute. One look!”

 

Newt is nodding long, barely able to hear him over the thudding of his heart in his ears. His phone is buzzing again in his back pocket. His mouth feels stuffed with cotton balls.

 

“That’s all I needed. I knew he wasn’t gonna make it.”

 

“Right, yeah--” Newt swallows the bile in his throat, coughing into his elbow and feeling all at once very small.

 

Hannibal does some fancy knife trick and stabs the dead Kaiju in the nose. “Ugly little bastard,” he says.

 

Newt can’t say he totally blames it for eating him, even if it does just about scare the shit out of him all over again. When it’s over he picks up the golden-toed shoe Hannibal left behind and finally catches his breath. 

 

The phone in his pocket is ringing again. 

 

He doesn’t know how it hasn’t died yet, but this time he does answer.

 

“There’d better be a  _ bloody good reason _ you’re not answering your phone--!” Something breaks in him at the sound of Hermann’s voice and Newt finds himself biting the inside of his mouth to suppress a sob, tears on his cheeks that he doesn’t remember shedding. 

 

“Hey, Herms,” he croaks, wrapping an arm around his middle as a sort of comfort to himself. “I’m, uh--”

 

His lab partner abruptly stops whatever angry tangent he was going off on, his voice very deliberately even when he responds.

 

“Newton, where are you?”

 

Newt lets out a shuddering breath, relieved, and grips at his side with white knuckles. His nose has started bleeding again.

 

Later, when there is nothing else to do but wait as the clock ticks ever-closer to midnight, they draw together, feeling the weight of their shared history, and if one hand finds another in that crowded room no one cares enough to look.

  
  
  


* * *

 

  
  


“Where’d I leave the goddamn--”

 

“Newton--”

 

“The tape recorder, where’d I leave the tape recorder, wasn’t it in my--”

 

“Newton, slow  _ down _ ,” Hermann says, and there’s amusement in his tone that was never there before, not for more than a moment, and they’re both pleasantly buzzed, still caught up in the adrenaline of saving the fucking world, and if Newt doesn’t find that tape recorder the whole thing will be ruined. 

 

“I’m slow, I’m plenty slow, Hermann, I’m slow as shit--”

 

He still can’t keep a straight face; every time he tries to impress upon himself the importance of finding the stupid thing he remembers again that they have time, they have their whole lives, they aren’t getting crushed or eaten or blown up.

 

He’s exhausted, despite it all, too tired to stay at the party the others are throwing but still far too wired to go to medical just yet. They can come and take him, as far as he’s concerned, and he’ll definitely have to go in the morning to make sure his brain isn’t too fried, but for now they’re alive and they won and Hermann’s looking at him like he hangs the moon and he’d drift a thousand more times for him to never stop.

 

A group of drunk J-Techs pass by the door, slurring the words to  _ Auld Lang Syne _ as they go, and the relief washes over him like a wave when he finally finds it stuffed in a desk drawer, slipping it into his pocket as he grabs the little lab flashlight off the table. 

 

Newt pulls up a chair to where Hermann’s already sitting, trying to open a bottle of champagne they’d swiped from Tendo. Their knees bump together and he doesn’t miss the little thrill in the upward twist of Hermann’s mouth at the contact.

 

“Dude, give it,” Newt laughs, and opens the bottle, quietly surprised by the steadiness of his hands. He takes a swig as Hermann makes an affronted noise, both grinning in spite of themselves, then hands it over.

 

It’s a strange feeling, he thinks, to feel the world so quickly hurtling towards disaster, towards certain doom in a matter of hours, then for that inevitable end to arrive in a crashing halt and just. Go on. 

 

(He’s always hated rollercoasters and flying, always got annoyed with Uncle Illia when he tried to reassure him that if it  _ did _ crash, which it wouldn’t, it’d be out of his hands anyways--that feeling when you pass the top of the roller coaster and you can’t help but scream, it’s practically ripped out of you, he’s never been able to stand that feeling but he knows it when he’s staring into the bright blue of Otachi’s gaping maw and finds that he can’t quite bring himself to make a sound.)

 

“Newton,” Hermann says, and he realizes all at once that his cheeks are wet. 

 

“Ah, shit--” Newt wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, letting out a sheepish, pained laugh. “Sorry, dude--”

 

“You don’t have to--”

 

“It’s been a long day, man--”

 

“Newton, it’s fine--”

 

“You know how it is.”

 

A pause. Hermann is noticeably staring very hard at Newt’s knee. Newt swallows heavily. 

 

“I do,” he says, his free hand leaving his pant leg for a second before returning, as if deciding against it.

 

Newt clears his throat loudly, startling Hermann, and inches closer, his chair scraping against the ground as he does. Even with the distant sounds of celebration outside the lab, it echoes, and he feels his face heat as he takes up the flashlight.

 

“Here, let me see your eye.”

 

Hermann obliges, leaning closer and allowing Newt to cup the side of his face with his free hand, keeping his open with his thumb on the lower eyelid as he shines the light. Hermann winces, involuntarily moving back a little, but Newt steadies him.

 

“Hold still, dude, you’re doing fine,” he says, intently examining the bloody discoloration on his iris caused by the drift. “Follow the light.”

 

“Is this really necessary?” Hermann asks, voice quiet, barely above a whisper. 

 

“I mean,  _ yeah _ , we did just drift with a friggin’ Kaiju after all, man.” Newt turns off the flashlight but doesn’t remove his hand. “Gotta make sure we’re not gonna have a stroke or something before medical can have at it.”

 

“And?” 

 

“And what?”

 

Hermann rolls his eyes but still doesn’t move away. “What’s--what’s the verdict?”

 

Newt’s thumb drags downward, releasing Hermann’s lower eyelid to trace his cheek, before he catches himself and pulls back and away, getting to his feet and making his way over to the workbench again.

 

“You’ve got some burst capillaries, sort of bloody discoloration--may or may not mean brain damage, I’m thinking  _ not _ , but you’ll be fine. Probably. Not like we really could get properly checked out tonight anyways, since they’re busy with the pilots and, uh, y’know.”

 

Hermann nods, worrying the handle of his cane as he stares into the near-distance. 

 

“Yours is worse. Your eye, I mean.”

 

Newt feels his mouth go dry. “Worse how?”

 

“The discoloration is darker.”

 

“Is the pupil dilated?”

 

Hermann squints, wrinkling his nose. “No. Not that I saw, anyways.”

 

Newt nods absently, lost for a moment before he makes is way towards the bathroom.

 

“Let me take a closer look!” Hermann shouts to be heard over the sound of cheering outside, getting up to close the door to the lab.

 

“You wouldn’t know what to look for, it’s fine,” says Newt, turning on the light in the bathroom and awkwardly angling the flashlight while he leans toward the mirror for a better look.

 

“Newton--”

 

“Hermann, it’s fine, I’m just--” He comes to an abrupt stop and his voice is shrill when he speaks again.

 

“Was, uh, was it always--does my eye look blue to you?” He turns, both surprised and not to find Hermann already behind him, and tries to pry his eyelids apart even as Hermann mirrors his earlier motion, cupping his cheek as he leans in to get a closer look.

 

“No.”

 

“Look closer.”

 

“Newton, it isn’t blue.”

 

“It is! I swear to god it is, I  _ just _ saw it, it was blue.”

 

“Why did you  _ ask _ me if you--” Hermann sighs heavily, releasing Newt, and kneads at the bridge of his nose. Newt leans against the sink, cleaning his glasses on the end of his no doubt equally dirty shirt, for lack of anything better to do with himself in that moment.

 

They fall into a silence that is not especially comfortable but no less amicable for it. 

 

Newt squirms under the weight of it.

 

“Are we ever gonna--”

 

“You really should--”

 

They both stop as abruptly as they’d started.

 

“Sorry--”

 

“No, I’m--”

 

Something cracks in Hermann’s expression and for just a moment Newt recognizes his former penpal in the nakedness of his face. He means to ask the question, wants to know, wants more than anything else in this world to finally,  _ finally _ talk to Hermann, to make sense of this whole thing that was born between them when they Drifted. 

 

Not since Trespasser has he felt his world more thoroughly shift, and he’s not sure what to think about that. 

 

He wants to ask Hermann a lot of things, wants to know everything about him, wants to lay out the path of his life and study it under a microscope until he’s got another six goddamn doctorates, until he climbs inside his brain and makes a home for himself there. He wants to ask him what they’ll do after this, where they’ll go, whether they’ll be together. He wants to move in with him lecture with him adopt two point five lizards and maybe a cat or two forget about the whole academia racket and open a charming B&B in Vermont anything,  _ anything _ \--

 

Hermann’s still looking at him.

 

Newt chokes on his words. Feels them rising to his tongue but finds himself unable to open his mouth and follow through. He can’t do it. He wants it, wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything, but he can’t fucking do it.

 

“You go first,” he says, and draws in on himself.

 

Hermann opens and closes his wide, thin mouth, and finally looks away. “It isn’t important.”

 

There’s a relief, to be free of the weight of his gaze, of that gravity, the inevitable pull dragging the two of them towards  _ something _ , and despite the ache it drums up within him to do so, he takes the out for what it is. Newt pushes off from the sink, feeling his stomach flop as Hermann startles, looking up, before remembering himself. He crosses and uncrosses his arms as he walks back into the main lab, out of that bathroom, away from the pressure and the gravity building in that room, and Hermann follows him. 

 

His lungs are in a vice. Again he feels that need, that bone-deep ache to  _ ask _ , to  _ know _ , and it tightens further. Newt settles on something innocuous, anything, to end it.

 

“What’s your favorite color, man?” 

 

Hermann stares at him, huffing out a disbelieving laugh, and Newt swallows his building nausea, readying himself for the fight.

 

“Green,” he says, unexpectedly soft. “It’s green.”

 

Newt nods, twice, and looks away.

 

“Mine’s blue,” he says, and doesn’t question the lie.

  
  
  


* * *

 

  
  


Some time later and quite a distance away, the red light of a camera flickers to life.

 

Dr. Newton Geiszler clears his throat, scratches idly at his sweating palm once, twice, then grips his pant leg with white knuckles. In the dim light of the recording he is the picture of exhaustion, stubble beginning to grow in on his cheeks. The discoloration around his iris--a subconjunctival hemorrhage, the Hermann-shaped voice at the back of his mind unhelpfully supplies--is dark, near black, the hazel of his natural eye color beginning to bleed into an off-red. He has not slept for the better part of a week, and it shows.

 

Simply put, he looks like hell froze over, an observation that is not entirely inaccurate.

 

“I--” Newt blinks, slow and pained, his voice croaking with disuse, and grimaces at the sound. He removes his glasses and busies himself with cleaning them on his ratty t-shirt, squinting against the light of the camera. He does not look up as he continues to speak.

 

“The date is, uh--” he pauses in his cleaning to squint at his watch “fuck, I don’t even know, this probably isn’t even working anymore but it  _ says _ it’s July twenty-first, so I guess I’ll go with that, uh, just past four in the morning. I’ve been up a while now if you couldn’t tell and I think it’s getting to me. Shit, I  _ hope _ it’s getting to me, because the alternative is, uh. Well, it’s not great.”

 

“I don’t know if you can see my eye,” at this he leans right in front of the camera and holds open the lid. His eye is bloodshot, pupil barely distinguishable from the iris. The blood looks like it’s moving, barely noticeable unless you really look, and as Newt sits back it’s obvious that he’s seen it.

 

“That whole...whatever the fuck that is started a few days ago. I mean, the hemorrhage never totally healed so it was always a little bit there, but ever since we came here it’d been getting worse little by little. Slow enough that I didn’t really notice at first especially with everything that’s been going on but now it’s  _ moving _ and I think my fingerprints might be moving too. Never when I look right at them but I’m sure they’re doing it, I know what I saw--”

 

He shakes his head with a slight groan, putting his glasses back on. “I’m getting off topic.”

 

Someone behind the camera says something inaudible.

 

Newt kneads at the bridge of his nose. “ _ No,  _ it’s not--it was like that before. I think. I don’t know, man.”

 

“I’ve been having nightmares lately--which is nothing new, not since the Drift, but the  _ specific _ nightmare I’ve been having--and yes, I do mean just one--is different. The other ones were mostly just replays of the weird shit I saw when I was...you know, and sometimes bits of memory. Sometimes mine, sometimes Hermann’s, but nothing I hadn’t seen then, because apparently my subconscious isn’t all that creative.”

 

Newt scratches idly at his cheek, still looking at something or someone just past the camera. 

 

“This one, it’s different. I think it’s taking bits from my memory and twisting them. Like, I see myself and I see Hermann and we’re where we were in LOCCENT when the Breach was closed, only this time we don’t get there in time, they’ve already done it and it hasn’t worked and I know this isn’t necessarily how it would have gone if things  _ had _ gone that way, maybe not that quickly or whatever, but there’s all this white light from the explosion and it’s coming for the Shatterdome and we can see it, somehow. It feels like when Otachi….yeah.”

 

He takes a deep breath, steadying himself, and continues.

 

“And we all know it’s coming, everyone does, but it’s like we’re all frozen in place just before it hits and then Hermann looks at me and says something but I can’t actually hear what he’s saying and then everything goes white and I wake up.”

 

Someone else speaks, then, and Newt looks very very small. 

 

“Hell if I know,” he laughs. It doesn’t meet his eyes. 

 

His eyes are exhausted. 

 

“But what matters is we’re two days out from the Lighthouse, right, and I wanna see it. I’ve gotta know what’s in there.”

 

“What if there’s nothing?”

 

Newt doesn’t respond, scratching absentmindedly at the back of his hand. It starts to bleed a little but he doesn’t notice. When he finally does speak, it’s directly to the camera.

 

“This is probably gonna be my last log,” he begins, no longer scratching as he crosses his arms across his chest, shoulders tense. “at least for a while anyways. Depends, I guess.”

 

“Um, unscientific aside--as if any of this is scientific, who the hell knows, maybe I’m just going crazy here, but uh. Unscientific aside. Hermann--” at this his voice cracks and something approaching sorrow flashes across his expression, quickly suppressed.

 

“Or whoever, I guess, whoever’s watching this. I think there’s something very wrong with me.”

 

Newt holds himself strangely, like he doesn’t quite fit together right, like somebody took him apart and lost some of the pieces when putting him back together. His voice is hoarse, urgent, when he speaks again. “And I’m--”

 

He cuts himself off, swallows heavily, shuts his eyes tight as if in great pain. 

 

The person on the other end of the camera says something and he nods twice, letting out a shuddering sigh. “Yeah, okay--”

 

Newt opens his eyes, still visibly pained, looks off camera for a moment, then back again. His eyes are wet and shining as he forces the words out.

 

“I’m---sorry. For what I’m about to do.”

 

The recording ends there.


	2. Chapter One

Hermann scrapes idly with a spoon at the mound of soggy sugar at the bottom of his mug, willing it to disperse as he frowns rather deliberately at his laptop. It’s been a long week, long few weeks really, although not a particularly eventful one. The work goes on, as it were, and it’s been a long time now since the world went back to whatever could be considered normal after--well. After. 

 

It feels, he thinks, rather like what he’d imagined his life to be in those few short years between university and Trespasser. Quiet but full, in its way. Back then he’d thought, perhaps foolishly, that he’d still be working with his father and Dietrich, but giant monsters from the sea aside he supposes now that their lives were always sort of drifting in different directions. Dietrich has a family now, couple of kids last he heard, quit academia in the early years of the War to go into finance instead. He hasn’t spoken to his father in a long time.

 

He finds himself now, as he does often, grading papers in the mostly empty faculty room by the nice, organized kitchenette that they all work so very hard to keep clean. Sometimes he looks at it, finds himself staring at the _cleanness_ of it for longer than he means to, and feels a wild sort of anger deep within him, a restless frustration at the current trajectory of his life--or lack thereof.

 

So much for those papers, Hermann thinks, exhaling sharply through his nose as he turns, predictably, to the email that’s been sitting unanswered in his inbox for the better part of his rather long week. Picking his reading glasses up from where they hang around his neck and placing them on his nose--for the drama of it, Newton used to say, like he’s too committed to the ongoing ritual of performing his own crotchetiness to wear normal glasses--he squints at it, reading and rereading the message as if in doing so he could glean some other meaning, the answer to a question he doesn’t think to ask.

 

He doesn’t receive many emails to his old PPDC address anymore, not for quite a while, when the bastards finally got the hint to stop asking him to come back for some project or another. 

 

Hermann has his reasons, of course--things have changed these last three years and without Marshal Pentecost at the helm the organization has turned into something he no longer recognizes. He still can’t believe it-- _Jaegers used against humans_ of all things, and maybe he should have seen this coming, maybe he should have paid more attention to Newton’s endless railing against the military industrial complex, but he was younger then, despite all his learning still taken with the romanticism of the whole thing. 

 

He would like to think that Pentecost would not have stood for this were he still alive, but he can’t say it with any real certainty. 

 

Not if he’s being truthful, though he isn’t sure he’s been wholly truthful in a very long time.

 

Hermann blows on his tea and takes a sip, grimacing at the taste; near-bitter in its sweetness. Too much sugar, just as he thought.

 

The email is brief, unexpectedly to the point. There’s to be a gala the following week in Hong Kong, meant to honor the surviving team behind Operation Pitfall as well as to discuss the current state of Jaeger technology--he suspects, to encourage them to give the stamp of approval on releasing the codes to private entities. The timing of it strikes him as odd, really. The third anniversary of Operation Pitfall isn’t for a few months yet and to his knowledge there isn’t any particular reason to be having such an event now of all times. Not that there necessarily needs to be one, he supposes, but the tone of the email did imply a sort of urgency in its planning. 

 

It’s the second email that tips him off.

 

A personal invitation to attend from the office of Liwen Shao herself.

 

Hermann’s  frown deepens, twists into something bitter, and he unceremoniously shuts his laptop before getting up to pour out his remaining tea.

 

A silence hangs in the air as he glances back towards the table and for just a moment it’s an otherwise unremarkable afternoon in August and Newton is avoiding his eyes as he tells him he has to leave. There’s something new, something greater, and Newton’s got to chase it, as he does, he’ll never rest if he doesn’t, and Hermann _knew_ that, he knew what he was getting into, but damned if a part of him hadn’t hoped they were getting somewhere, that Newton meant a word of it, that they could face the world _together_ instead of--

 

“Shao _bloody_ Industries,” he growls, slamming his mug into the sink with far more force than he means to and startling as it breaks into large, jagged chunks of enamel. “ _SHIT--_ ”

 

“Dr. Gottlieb--” 

 

“ _WHAT?!_ ” Hermann’s face is burning as he whirls around, hot shame curling in his belly. One of his grad students hovers uncomfortably in the doorway, visibly shrinking in on herself, and he feels his anger deflate.

 

“There’s, uh--there’s somebody here to see you.”

 

“Oh,” Hermann lets out a shuddering breath, smoothing out his hair. “Yes, of course. Send them in.”

 

He doesn’t recognize his visitor, though a part of him wonders if maybe that isn’t the point. There isn’t anything particularly remarkable about his appearance, well-groomed in that specific way that many businessmen are, and Hermann feels immediately inadequate, suddenly very aware that he’s hardly slept these past few days and it shows all too well in the lines of his face.

 

“Dr. Gottlieb,” the man greets, voice pleasantly even.

 

Hermann nods minutely, trying very hard to swallow the urge to apologize, to explain himself. Instead, he pulls himself together, face heating. “Yes, what can I do for you?”

 

“I represent Shao Industries,” He says, folding his hands in front of him.

 

“Ah,” says Hermann, sighing heavily. The corner of his mouth twitches involuntarily, embarrassment curling up inside of him again, and he averts his eyes, instead electing to start gingerly collecting the shattered pieces of his mug. The visitor makes no move to help.

 

“Ms. Shao asked me to...swing by and check on you. She’s afraid you may not have received her invitation to the upcoming gala.”

 

“I have.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“I _have_ received it, and you can tell Ms. Shao that as flattered as I am by the invitation, I don’t code Jaegers anymore. Whatever advances are being made in the field are no longer any concern of mine, thank you.”

 

Silence, for a moment. The visitor smiles, expression otherwise blank. Hermann bristles, gathering himself together, bracing-- _always bracing, he’s never really stopped, never in his life_ \--as he tries to give his most withering look. 

 

How far the great Dr. Gottlieb has fallen, he thinks, altogether far too aware of just how small he feels now, with all the world around him. He was big once, back in the lab, back when all the world lived in those four walls, but that was a long time ago, and in the wake of the war he helped bring to an end he finds himself unanchored. Weightless. Clinging to what he can grab, hanging on for dear life, when once he could have crawled inside, could have found some comfort in the claustrophobia, in the cramped little place he carved out for himself in what was left of their dying world. That _they’d_ carved out.

 

“And what, _exactly_ , is your concern now, Doctor? What is it that you do?”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

There’s something ugly in the sharp line of his mouth, something cruel, and Hermann glances toward the door.

 

“It’s my understanding, Dr. Gottlieb, that these past few years you haven’t had much to do since the lecture tour ended. Rather abrupt, wasn’t it?”

 

“What was your name again?” Hermann asks, face coloring as he wills his voice not to waver. A little ball of anxiety finds a home in his chest, expanding into a palpable dread with every passing moment. 

 

“You can call me Vogel, if you like,” says Vogel. His gaze is cold, scrutinizing, detached. Hermann feels rather like a frog awaiting dissection. “I’m sorry, Doctor, I mean no disrespect, but Ms. Shao insisted upon your attendance. I know you’re a _busy_ man, but there are things you do not yet know that she believes you should.”

 

“Such as?” 

 

“It is my understanding that you were mentored by Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld in the early days of the Jaeger program, is that right?”

 

“It is.” He’d been so young then, twenty four and working for his father, barely a doctor--he’d still been presenting his thesis when Trespasser came, caught up in the thrill of his own genius, wanting to be an astronaut before reality killed that whole dream--he had worked alongside Dr. Schoenfeld through the early testing, even stayed on after his father left. Those were strange days, so far away now, the world they knew so newly destroyed when the letter came. It was meant for his father, he remembered, but he’d read it anyway, and the rest was history. 

 

“Dr. Schoenfeld died last week.”

 

“Oh,” says Hermann, feeling a piece of his world shift once more. “I’m sorry to hear that. He was a good man.”

 

Vogel shrugs. “Not especially, but I’m sure his family would appreciate the sentiment.”

 

“Why haven’t I heard anything about this?”

 

“Wouldn’t have thought you’d need to, since from what I’ve heard you--”

 

“Not--not that,” Hermann says, indignant. “I don’t mean the--no. Why haven’t I heard anything about his death?”

 

“The circumstances are of interest to our mutual friends at the PPDC, so I’m sure you can understand the need for discretion.” Vogel hums, folding his hands neatly once more.

 

Hermann nods along. His frown deepens as he chews absently at the inside of his cheek.

 

Vogel smiles, baring his teeth, and they shake hands. “Keep in touch,” he says, and turns to leave.

 

He stops, abruptly, turns on his heel. “Oh, Doctor, I almost forgot--”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Dr. Geiszler sends his love.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Hermann goes, however begrudgingly, and although he’s loathe to admit it he knows on some level that he was always going to go. It’s closure, on some level, closing the door on more than one chapter of his life, really. The person he was when he worked for Schoenfeld is not the same man he was during the later years of the war and neither are anything like the man he is now. He adjusts his tie idly, meeting his reflection’s gaze with a tired grimace, having hurried into the men’s room and out of sight the moment he arrived.

 

The thing is. Well. The thing of it is that--whether by some side effect of the Drift or merely the result of age, Hermann has begun to feel more and more like the past is disappearing further from sight all the time, closer to the edge of the horizon with each passing day, and perhaps some part of him has spent the better part of those long-past years believing that there  _was_ no future to be had, certainly not the one he’s found himself in, but lately as the days go by and vanish as the years before them had he feels ever-more like he’s standing in a room slowly filling with water. That the water has reached his chest now, and there’s no way out but his feet are still comfortably on the ground and he isn’t yet actively drowning so there’s nothing to do but stand and wait for it to be above his head, the weight of it crushing something deep in his chest as if the water were somehow solid even as he could brush it aside with a gesture.

 

 There’s a pressure there, has been a long time now, and he doesn’t know how long he’s got until he’s really and truly drowning but he almost hopes it’ll hurry up already and save him the headache of waiting.

 

It’s been three years now the world’s been saved and a part of him is still waiting for the other shoe to drop. But thinking about those months after Operation Pitfall, when a lifetime stretched before him and he still had...well. Those are the sort of thoughts that make the water rise just a bit higher.

 

There’s a picture, taken the night the War ended. He doesn’t remember who took it, some J-Tech probably, but somehow it’d made its way to Tendo eventually, who faithfully passed it along to him not long after Newton left. He takes it out of his wallet now without looking, not needing to, the motion practiced enough that he doesn’t have to look until it’s unfolded, until the knowledge that it’s there eats at him far too much not to look.

 

Newton looks like hell, with his glasses cracked and a bloody tissue still stuffed in one nostril, visibly sweaty and covered in grime and grinning wildly, his arm slung around Hermann’s shoulder. His past self isn’t looking much better, hair plastered to his forehead, but he’s leaning into the touch and he’s staring at Newton as he looks at the camera and the look on his face is like he’d hung the stars, like they had a future, finally, and it was more beautiful than anything either could have hoped for, like he’d seen everything there was to see of the man beside him and had been seen the same and--

 

Hermann runs a thumb over Newt’s face on the crinkled, heavily folded photograph, mouth settling into a miserable line as he traces the line of his cheek, his jaw. Blinks. Once, twice, then again as he recognizes a familiar wetness.

 

“Ah.” Folding the picture up again and returning it to his wallet he dabs at his eyes with the end of his sleeve and lets out a shuddering sigh. 

 

“Okay,” he says to no one. “Okay.”

 

Hermann looks to the mirror again, steadying himself, and tries for a smile. It’s a tight and awkward thing, hopefully polite enough to get him through the evening, restrained. 

 

He looks like his father. To think, once he would’ve felt some semblance of pride at that. Now there’s only that familiar claustrophobic sort of emptiness, like all the world is pressing in around him until there’s nothing left inside but white noise and static. In the three years since the Drift the scarring of his left iris has not faded, remaining stubbornly as a reminder. Like another piece of Newton left splintered in his life, he thinks with no small amount of embarrassment at the notion. Hermann has never thought much of his face, but he wishes very much now that it would stop collecting ghosts.

 

Something flickers at the periphery of his vision and he turns, startled, to find nothing there. Hermann frowns, running a hand through his hair one last time as he makes his way out of the bathroom and closes the door behind him.

 

The event hall is relatively quiet for how many people are there; Hermann recognizes quite a few from the Hong Kong Shatterdome as well as people his father would have known, veterans of the technological side of the Kaiju War. But there’s almost as many he doesn’t recognize; business types, investors maybe, upstarts in the new and  _exciting_  private Jaeger tech industry. Hermann rolls his shoulders, drawing himself up and trying for some resolve to push back the distinct bitterness he feels at the reminder that the cause he’d devoted most of his adult life to has moved on without him.

 

“Dr. Gottlieb? Dr. Hermann Gottlieb?” He turns at the sound of his name and finds himself enveloped in a hug. “Oh, it’s good to see you.”

 

Hermann blinks once he’s let go, once and again before he recognizes the tall blonde woman standing before him.

 

“Dr. Lightcap!” he starts, trying to catch up to his own words. 

 

“Come on now, it’s Caitlin, you know that.”

 

“Right,” he coughs. “I was sorry to hear about--”

 

She shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah, uh. Well, y’know.”

 

Hermann nods, not quite sure what to say for himself. He wants to tell her--well. He  _wishes_ he could truthfully say that he would have come to visit Dr. Schoenfeld had he known of his illness, but truly he knows it’s entirely possible someone could have told him before. The last few years he’s fallen out of contact with everyone from those days thoroughly enough that he may have even thrown it out in the mail for all he knows.

 

“Cancer, wasn’t it?” He asks, wincing inwardly when she visibly flinches.

 

“Yeah, Jas--Dr. Schoenfeld--he was sick a while. We ran tests, back when he was still well enough that he could still walk around, and it. Well. We think it was the same as what killed Stacker Pentecost.”

 

He frowns. “But Dr. Schoenfeld wasn’t a pilot.”

 

Caitlin nods, expression grim. “Yeah, that’s the part I’m having issue with. Actually, I was hoping to speak to your partner--”

 

“Oh, no--” Hermann chuckles awkwardly, more than a little mortified at the subject being brought up. “He isn’t my--Newton-- _Dr. Geiszler_ and I don’t work together any more, not for a while now. He’s been with Shao Industries since last year.”

 

“Oh, my apologies, I must’ve been mistaken,” Caitlin says, face reddening slightly. She opens her mouth to continue but is cut off by feedback.

 

“ _Excuse me_ , everyone, may I have your attention please?”

 

And as Hermann turns to look to the podium at the front of the room, he sees him and freezes. The speaker is still talking in the background but Hermann hasn’t the slightest idea what’s being said, his heartbeat pounding in his ears and drowning it out. 

 

 _Newton Geiszler,_ dressed far better than he’s ever known him to, sleek in all black. He isn’t wearing his glasses. Hermann isn’t sure why that last bit bothers him as much as it does, to see Newton without his glasses, and he feels like a child for it, but it pools something like dread deep in his chest. He looks good, damn him, he looks  _good_ and Hermann hates him for it, hates that he gets to look good and not care when he feels like he’s coming apart at the seams. Newt is to the side of the stage with a beautiful woman on his arm--or, upon a closer look, he’s on her arm. 

 

Newton is leaning in, whispering, smirking,  _God damn him_ , to a woman Hermann belatedly recognizes as his boss, Liwen Shao. She is ice cold, velvet over steel, expression politely neutral but completely unimpressed. Her entourage of security guards hang back a few steps, just barely out of sight. As the speaker finishes introducing her and the room erupts into applause, Shao pats Newton on the arm dismissively and he releases her, joining in the clapping as she takes her place at the podium. He’s grinning but there’s an edge to it that Hermann doesn’t recognize, something mean, something harder than he’s ever known Newton to be, and he frowns but does not, cannot look away.

 

It’s been three long years since their Drift, most of that time spent apart, but in that moment it feels like it was only yesterday he was inside his mind, knew him more thoroughly than he’d thought it possible to know another person, more deeply than he could ever have prepared himself for with his own sterile upbringing. Even now, if he concentrates hard enough, he can still conjure up flashes of what he saw in Newt’s memories; he’s twelve, holding up an iguana bigger than his arm as he grins, spotty and brace-faced, he’s fifteen studying among adults, he’s si _xteen and manic and jumping off a roof because he thinks he can fly--_

 

_Otachi’s tendrils descend, bright and beautiful and absolutely terrifying--_

 

_He’s throwing his arm around Hermann’s shoulder and isn’t pushed away and there’s something warm growing in his chest and he wants to ki--_

 

_God, how much longer do I have to do this smile and laugh smile and laugh I can’t stand her who does she think she is I’m so fucking tired can you just kill me if you’re gonna kill me get it over with I can’t do this anymore shut up shut up shut the fuck up-- HERMANN--_

 

The world flickers blue, Hermann sways on his feet as Dr. Lightcap takes his arm, confused concern written all over her face as she tries to get his attention, and when he regains his balance Newton is staring right back at him. The grin on his face falls, expression strange, as he slowly stops clapping.

 

If he didn’t know any better, Hermann would swear...he was sure of it, for just a moment as their eyes met Newton looked absolutely terrified, but then it was gone, replaced by an almost mockingly cheery wave and a grin that doesn’t quite fit his face.

 

"Are you alright? Do you want to sit down?" Dr. Lightcap is by his side, concerned, but he cannot hear her, cannot look away. Newton's expression changes, becomes just a bit meaner, but he does not look away. He doesn't even blink.

 

His eyes are lighter than Hermann remembered, and unmarred by the scarring from their drift. 

 

Hermann turns, feeling the world sway just a bit again, and leaves as quickly as he can.


End file.
